Vocabulary Study: Slang

snooker

Mr. Cutts sounded remarkably upbeat and unperturbed during this conversation, which was a surprise given that we were discussing a large, sustained effort to snooker his employer. Asked about his zenlike calm, he said the company strives not to act out of anger. You get the sense that Mr. Cutts and his colleagues are acutely aware of the singular power they wield as judge, jury and appeals panel, and they’re eager to project an air of maturity and judiciousness.

snitch

shyster

The percentages, and the graph in particular, have been passed around in our field from reputable person to reputable person. The people who originally created the fabrications are to blame for getting this started, but there are clearly many people willing to bend the information to their own devices. Kinnamon's (2002) investigation found that Treichler's percentages have been modified in many ways, depending on the message the shyster wants to send. Some people have changed the relative percentages. Some have …

snitch

Lulz Security, commonly abbreviated as LulzSec, was a computer hacker group that claimed responsibility for several high profile attacks, including the compromise of user accounts from Sony Pictures in 2011. The original leader of LulzSec was a computer security specialist that used the online moniker Sabu. His name is Hector Xavier Monsegur. The group also claimed responsibility for taking the CIA website offline. Some security professionals have applauded LulzSec for drawing attention to insecure systems and the dangers of password reuse. It has gained attention due to its high profile targets and the sarcastic messages it has posted in the aftermath of its attacks. Recently, it has become known that the leader, Sabu, was in fact working with the FBI. Several members suspected that he was a snitch. In total, there were six arrests.

cockamamie

Before we get started, there are a few things you oughta know about me. I'm 29, no kids, and I live in a smallish apartment in Seattle with my boyfriend, who has kindly agreed to go along with these cockamamie schemes. We've got no garden space and one car between the two of us.

rope-a-dope

And today it all makes sense. Google just sandbagged its rivals. The whole thing was a rope-a-dope maneuver. Google never cared about the Nortel patents. It just wanted to drive up the price so that AppleSoft (those happy new bedmates) would overpay. Today, with the Motorola deal, Google picks up nearly three times as many patents as AppleSoft got from Novell and Nortel. More important, Google just raised the stakes in a huge way for anyone who wants to stay in the smartphone market

swank

‎…just spent more time trying to change the boy's XBox gamertag than I spent doing my taxes. And found out that my own profile name, for Xbox account management, is “SwankyCrayfish8.” Husband denies responsibility. [swank, crayfish]

Facebook remark.

• grunge → It also launched the commercial vogue for grunge and … For example, suppose you are the user ‘mozart’ on the local machine ‘toe.grunge.com’, and the server machine is ‘chainsaw.yard.com’. [from the unix cvs manual]

• half-assed → what an half-assed job.

• stool piegeon → When consulted for the Buffalo Bill case, Lecter stubbornly refused to provide any mere “stool pigeon” leads, rather in an almost P.T. Barnum fashion, he flaunted with great flair his intellectual prowess as he psychoanalysed Bill [about the movie Silence of the Lamb 1991. Time Mag?. Phineas Taylor Barnum is of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus fame.]

• rube → “You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste.” [Dialogue from film _Silence of the Lamb_.]

• windbag → My grandpap says he is a great big old windbag.

• whammy → A Double Whammy? [title of an article]

• scalp → You've been scalped. [from the movie Silence of the Lamb]

• kooky → [the film Kalifornia didn't make it big] Maybe because of the kooky title…

• boggle → In the mind-boggling hoopla last week, it was easy to forget that much of the system being demonstrated was still under cnostruction…

• bean counter → I don't mean to sound discouraging, but those are some of the issues the bean counters have to consider before spending the money on a new forum.

• brass ring → Inevitable many students of limited talent spend huge amounts of time and money pursuing some brass-ring occupation, only to see their dreams denied. • in email 2002-05-28, Sam Hopkins says: The term ‘brass ring’ refers to the old custom (circa 1915 - 1955ish) of having a brass ring on merry-go-rounds. If a rider grabbed the brass ring, he/she was entitled to some prize. (I looked for a better definition on the web—in slang dictionaries—but couldn't find one.)

• gung ho

• rat race

• hip-hop

• bush-league

• pony-up → To pay (money owed or due)

• honky-tonk

• devil-may-care

• happy-go-lucky

• slap-happy → I accept that my slap-happy use of the term “non-language” was loose and inaccurate

• far-out

• hanky-panky

• zapper → For the nation's runaways, Hollywood is like a huge electric bug zapper that can't be unplugged, attracting and then destroying thousands and thousands of children.

• pap → He [Jostein Gaarder] wrote Sophie's World to fill a gap. Stores were full of New Age pap and other mystical mush, but there were no books that would introduce young people to serious philosophy. [Looking-Glass Philosophy, By JOHN ELSON, Time Mag. 1994-11-14. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jostein_Gaarder
].

• Podunk → Some of the rest of us don't believe rankings [of schools] as such mean a hill of beans through the first three dozen (at least), as you can learn much at many places, and few of us have
gone to both Harvard and Podunk U. [Time Mag?]

• crummy → The U.S. vehicles were known for lousy quality, high prices and crummy service.

• schmoozing → they [mathematicians] tend to be shy and intellectual - not good at schmoozing. [schmooz is Yiddish origin.]

• meshugaas → now drop the meshugaas… [Yiddish origin.]

• shtick → [Yiddish oigin]

• schlepp → … asking people to help me schlepp this stuff… [schlepp is of Yiddish origin.]

• lowdown → The lowdown is: [Andrew] Wiles' work was ground-breaking.

• raunchy → A bunch a raunchy looking business guys in suits in a
smelly hotel conference room, while women in skimpy, Las Vegas type
costumes walked around with trays of soda and drinks.

• antsy → So I get a little antsy when I can't pick up my e-mail.

• twit → you twit…

• bellyache → instead of bellyaching, I …

• snazzy → The interface isn't really snazzy, but but not
counterintuitive either…

• grok → …if you grok tensors, you migt find Mathematica
interesting…

• keister → …actually get off my keister and go to the
library…

• kludge → …what a kludge this is…

• diddly → the authors did not know diddly about programming
languages…; I don't give diddleysquat for corporations.